We observe that the Atlantic razor clam (Ensis directus) burrows out of sand rapidly by simply extending and contracting its muscular foot. This is notably different from its well-known downward burrowing strategy or the dual-anchor mechanism, where ...
Soft robot fabrication by casting liquid elastomer often requires multiple steps of casting or skillful manual labor. We present a novel soft robotic fabrication technique: negshell casting (negative-space eggshell casting), that reduces the steps re...
Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE
Jun 10, 2020
This protocol presents a method for manufacturing, control, and evaluation of the performance of a soft robot that can climb inclined flat surfaces with slopes of up to 84°. The manufacturing method is valid for the fast pneunet bending actuators in ...
Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
May 20, 2020
New-era soft microrobots for biomedical applications need to mimic the essential structures and collective functions of creatures from nature. Biocompatible interfaces, intelligent functionalities, and precise locomotion control in a collective manne...
IEEE transactions on biomedical circuits and systems
May 19, 2020
This paper proposes novel methods for making embryonic bio-inspired hardware efficient against faults through self-healing, fault prediction, and fault-prediction assisted self-healing. The proposed self-healing recovers a faulty embryonic cell throu...
The nonlinear dynamics of a bird-like flapping wing robot under randomly uncertain disturbances was studied in this study. The bird-like flapping wing robot was first simplified into a two-rod model with a spring connection. Then, the dynamic model o...
Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE
Apr 25, 2020
Ionic electromechanically active capacitive laminates are a type of smart material that move in response to electrical stimulation. Due to the soft, compliant and biomimetic nature of this deformation, actuators made of the laminate have received inc...
Soft robots have garnered interest for real-world applications because of their intrinsic safety embedded at the material level. These robots use deformable materials capable of shape and behavioral changes and allow conformable physical contact for ...
Theoretical guarantees of capture become complicated in the case of a swimming fish or fish robot because of the oscillatory nature of the fish heading. Building on the connection between a swimming fish and the canonical Chaplygin sleigh, a novel st...
Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
Mar 16, 2020
Mechanically guided, 3D assembly has attracted broad interests, owing to its compatibility with planar fabrication techniques and applicability to a diversity of geometries and length scales. Its further development requires the capability of on-dema...